This film leaves you with a heavy heart, so gloomy, dark, slow, painful, really frustrating and deep it is. But this is just what David Cronnenberg wanted to achieve. I started to watch this strange, weird work with a rather suspicious mind, but after some time, was totally absorbed in it. The film triggers a very dangerous ground - the inner world of a mentally disturbed man, Spider, played by great Ralph Fiennes, who does a marvelous job, showing us a slow, seemingly harmless man, who anyway killed his Mom and tried to poison with gas another woman. The deep, sepia tones of the film, painful recollections, slightly and intentionally boring scenes do exactly what they have to do - leave you with a pain in your chest. Mr Byrne and Mrs. Richardson do a brilliant work playing Spider's hapless parents, drinking, swearing, having really hard times. Anyway, this is a breathtaking work, especially in its later part, when Spider gets back to his frenzied schizophrenia and begins his cobweb weaving only to kill a woman who badly reminds him of his Mother. A very deep, but albeit prolonged treatise of mental disease. Redcommended
